


Drive

by Listenerofshadows



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anxiety, Crying, Dissociation, Gen, Open to Interpretation, Self-destructive habits, Sickness, Sleep-Deprieved, Some Comfort Mostly Angst, Vague References to Covid-19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25270864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Listenerofshadows/pseuds/Listenerofshadows
Summary: Lately, all Virgil has fantasized about is driving away to a place where the Year 2020 doesn’t exist. It’s illogical and ludicrous, because it’s not possible to physically escape it all. But try telling that to Virgil, who’s done nothing but try and run away from his fears since childhood.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	Drive

**Author's Note:**

> This is…kinda a vent fic? I’ve been wanting to write another fic involving present day events for awhile but this is not the fic I had in mind. Please don't ask for a continuation--I'll decide on my own if I continue this verse past an one-shot, thanks.

The moon greets Virgil with a crescent grin as he pulls out of his work’s parking lot late at night. It’s a comforting glow, soft and warm in ways that the artificial street lights could never achieve. He smiles back at the moon, taking his eyes off the road. Something he knows to be dangerous and his anxiety doesn’t waste time jumping at once to remind him. 

He pushes these worries aside, tapping a rhythmic beat against his steering wheel. Normally, he’d be more diligent. But he’s exhausted and he’s driven the route between his work and home so many countless times that he could do it in his sleep. 

Still, he has to watch himself when he almost makes a wrong turn. He’s lived at his new apartment for four months and yet it’s easy in this state to meander back to his old dwelling like a horse whose rider has fallen asleep in the saddle. 

He thinks about turning on music to keep his mind awake, fingers twitching as he does so, but he does not do so. Instead, he gets on the highway, watching as the world flies past his car. So fast, almost too fast. He’s going at least five, ten miles past the speed limit. A younger version of himself would be freaked by that.

Once upon a time, he hated driving. No, he feared it. The idea of being in control of a machine that could, at any moment, kill himself or others used to petrify him. Now? The action of driving is almost as mundane and monotonous as brushing his teeth.

Physically, he is the one at the wheel, controlling the vehicle. But mentally, he is separated from the action. His thoughts of nothing and everything all at once. Just like the whole year has felt like. A year that has flown by faster than he can process, but has also plodded along sluggishly. 

Lately, all he’s fantasized about is driving away to a place where the Year 2020 doesn’t exist. It’s illogical and ludicrous, because it’s not possible to physically escape it all. But try telling that to Virgil, who’s done nothing but try and run away from his fears since childhood. 

He’s just tired. Exhausted of the world falling apart at the seams when it’s supposed to only be himself doing that. He can’t handle the numbers skyrocketing, the constant flow of new safety measures at work he knows are good yet so tiring to readjust to again and again. The angry dissents, the injustice and apathy of it all. 

Exhaling, he flicks on the turn-signal and the car drifts towards the exit lane. Too far right, almost veering into the shoulder of the road and down into the gully beside it. 

“Shit!” Virgil hisses, the loud vibration of hitting the line marking shoulder keeping him from becoming another highway death statistic. He pulls away from the line, his heartbeat accelerating. He continues off the highway without further incident.

Still, it’s enough to ignite his old fear of driving, enough to force his consciousness back into his body and focus on the road. The rest of his drive home is painfully boring compared to those exciting few seconds. When he does eventually reach his apartment building, he feels himself aching with relief.

Both his body and mind is craving for sleep, to escape from the conscious world for a few glorious hours. He both loves and loathes sleep for this very reason; loves it because it is a reprieve from reality and loathes it because it is but a temporary one.

After checking, and double-checking his car is locked, Virgil stumbles to his apartment like a zombie from a low-grade horror film. He fumbles with entering his key inside the keyhole a few times. Eventually he manages to get it in.

Prior to passing through the threshold of his front door, he had a task-list floating around in his head. A task-list he likes to call, “Virgil’s Agenda To Get The Fuck to Sleep As Soon As Possible”

It includes the following things:

  * Nab a quick late-night snack because he’s starving and experts be damned
  * Go to the bathroom, contemplate brushing his brush for five minutes before deciding the one-minute activity is too much energy
  * Collapse into bed without changing out of his work uniform
  * Spend an hour scrolling on his phone until he’s too incoherent for anxious thoughts to keep him awake all night
  * Sleep until his alarm wakes him up for work in the afternoon.



All of this is thrown out the figurative window when he spies his roommate and best friend Patton curled up on the living room couch. He’s still awake, half-disinterestedly watching an episode of The Office. Normally, this isn’t anything out of the ordinary. For as he chastises Virgil for dismal sleeping habits, the man is a hypocrite. Virgil has caught him on numerous occasions on a Netflix binge way past the witching hour.

Something about this time feels off. Virgil can’t decide if it’s his own anxiety or the existence of the virus-that-shall-not-be-named that causes him to feel this way. Maybe both, even. There’s just something about how Patton turns to look at him with a hint of dazed terror in his eyes.

“Hi, Pat.” Virgil says, taking his mask off. Honestly he’s gotten so used to wearing it that he sometimes forgets when it’s on his face.

“You, um, might want to keep that on.” Patton bits his lips.

“Oh?”

“I woke up from my nap today with chills.”

Virgil tries keeping his face neutral, “Any other symptoms?”

“M-my body aches all over, and–and I have a really bad headache–” This is where Patton dissolves into tears and Virgil’s heart breaks right then and there.

He takes a step closer and this freaks Patton out further. “Stay away! I don’t want you to g–get sick!”

Virgil complies, taking a few steps back even. He shakes his head though, biting back a harsh laugh. “I know you’re just trying to protect me, but let’s face it; you and I both know I probably gave it to you. You work from home–I don’t. And even if you didn’t get it from me, we both live together. There’s no way I haven’t already been exposed.”

“I-I know, but just to be s-s-safe–”

“Of course,” Virgil says gently, because while he sees taking precautions a moot point he still respects his friend’s wishes. “Listen, we’ll go to a testing site in the morning, okay? I’ll probably get quarantined from work so, um, at least now I’ll finally have time to rewatch Avatar with you?”

Patton nods but he’s still upset. All sniffles and hiccups with a broken sob here and there.

“Hey, hey, it’ll be okay, alright? Even if you test positive, things will be okay.” Virgil says, desperate to assuage Patton’s fears in some way, never mind his own, “let’s just watch The Office for now and worry about things tomorrow, alright?”

“O-okay,” Patton agrees, wiping tears and snot away with a corner of his blanket.

They watch the show mostly in silence, aside from a few forced laughs here and there. Even the antics of one Michael Scott isn’t enough to break the somber mood. Virgil’s heart beats sluggishly, as if he’s been put to cryosleep. He should be more devastated, his anxiety going to overdrive with presenting him all the worst case scenarios. Instead he feels nothing.

Maybe he’s in denial. Or maybe he has always known this was gonna happen eventually. Either to himself, Patton or both.

“Hey Patton?” He says, “when all of this over, let’s go on a road trip. You can pick the destination. I don’t care where it is other than it has to take a fuckton of hours to drive to.”

Patton is silent for a moment. He doesn’t teasingly ask Virigl to put a quarter in the swear jar. He breathes slowly, peeking above his blanket, “What about Yellowstone State Park? We could go there to see Old Faithful and the buffalo.”

“Yeah, okay we can go there,” Virgil nods, “let’s invite Logan, I bet he’d like that.”

“Can we also–” Patton coughs, covering his mouth with his blanket, “can we also invite Roman?”

Virgil rolls his eyes good-naturedly, “Sure, we can invite Prince Insufferable if you insist. The more the merrier.”

So lost do they get in a hypothetical road trip, that the show and the world itself fades from the two’s thoughts for the rest of the night.


End file.
